Who cares

Rating: 4/10 (3 April 2004)

Best Buy had it on sale for 9.99, the same as a movie ticket, so I bought it.
I finally viewed it last night.
I knew going in that it wasn't a "true" zombie flick, that it was a plague and the infected were 'alive' not undead.
I watched it with as open a mind as possible.
And in the end, I thought "It's OK but certainly not great and nowhere NEAR scary".
I do not play 'games' with horror movies, either I am scared, bored or somewhere in between.
I REALLY wanted to love this movie, but I do not. many friends recommended it highly - singing its praises.

!SPOILERS!

Yes, some very cool and original things, like the coma storyline, Selena's take out of her partner in the house, the rats and of course the empty streets.
But then again, for a national capitol's streets to be SO empty, soon became 'false' - I found myself thinking "Where is Everybody!!!" like that airline commercial. Not good. I mean if the infected are alive, then it would stand to reason that when they attacked, some of their victims would be killed and there would be a lot more corpses about. Not to mention abandoned cars. Finally, the city would be burning in a lot of places.
The opening sequence in the lab was ridiculously lame as were the Director's comments about his "statement" about the virus.
I like Brendan Gleeson, and actually thought the characters were as cool as those in similar movies. But a bicycle messenger's miraculous transformation into a soldier killing machine had me groaning.
As for the infected? REALLY disappointing. When they stopped chasing the cab at the end of the tunnel sequence, I realized these 'monsters' are pussies.
Easy to kill, the only scary things about them are that they ambush and they are super contagious. So why use edged implements like machetes with the STATED risk of getting blood in the mouth? Apparently the writer couldn't be bothered with his own movie's logic or continuity.
Don't get me started with the whole "Army Guys" as bad guys clichÃ©. Ho-freakin-hum. Been there done that too often - Day of the Dead, Night of the Comet etc etc etc.
I suppose if I were female the whole "Joy Division" concept would have personally been more rattling, but by this point in the film, I was just waiting for it to end.
I just HATED the whole campout at the church ruins scene, from the insipid horses to the Valium nonsense to the complete breakdown of the character/circumstantial logic. I mean drugging yourself to sleep in the wide open when there are INFECTED running about??? Then the way they offed Brendan Gleeson's character...
As I type this I realize that anything I liked was just the occasional cool scene or concept that shored up a lot of rather uninteresting, repetitive and ultimately disappointing story.
And the endings? ALL OF THEM SH_TE!
The best thing I can say about this is that having bought it on DVD I can trade it in for credit.
I chalk this one up in that same bewildering category as The Ring. My sister and I were literally RAISED on horror films, we watched Texas Chainsaw Massacre as KIDS.
My wife and her friends got nightmares from watching The Ring. My sis and I got bored. How anyone could be frightened by a soggy chick crawling out of a TV set is beyond me. It was stupid in Videodrome and Shocker, it is stupid here. But I digress.
I really can't fault anyone for liking ANY movie; I certainly like some films that are greatly disdained. And in the end it is only opinion.
And in my opinion, if all I can expect these days for horror is The Ring, 28 Days Later, Resident Evil, The Others, House of a Thousand Corpses and the BEST is Dawn of the Dead 2004, then I must sadly conclude that horror as a genre is DEAD. I liked Dawn of the Dead 2004, but it is an anomaly and only very good not great.
How freaking sad.